Not tryying to come off that way, just assumed when I workout and my arms get bigger around/bench increases that I must be gaining muscle. So it's not possible to lose your gut and build your arms/chest at the same time? Because my diet, cardio every other day, and weights on the other days have equated to that for the last few years. I let myself go all winter every year, arms get smaller, chest gets flatter, gut gets bigger...and weight goes up.

As I said, you can a can muscle/lose fat for the first 4-6 weeks of newb gains, which sounds like you hit every year since you let yourself go over the winter. The "increase" in the size of your muscle is likely sarcoplasmic fluid which doesn't necessary increase the contractile proteins and size of muscle fibers. Likely that what you notice is an increase in the ability to see your muscle with the fat decreasing over them. Are you just going by how they look or are you actually measuring your arms getting "bigger?"

Yeah I don't know. I'm full on low carb and I definitely think my muscles have gotten bigger from lifting, but it also probably has to do with losing the fat around the muscle too.

Definitely losing fat. Many bodybuilders I know look like they have much bigger muscles at contest weights that are 20-30 lbs below their offseason weight when their muscles are measured to actually be bigger. Shadows are a great thing!

Down to 181.4 today, but more impressively I busted out 40 pushups in a row and didn't slow down at all and probably could have done 50 easy but my ****ing cat decided that she wanted to hangout right under me when I got to 40.